Kiwis for Balanced Reporting on the Middle East
January 20, 2010
Press inserts misleading headlines over KBRM letters
The Press recently reopened its letters column to what it calls ‘the debate’, following news reports of John Minto's protest against an Israeli tennis player. On Jan 12 a KBRM letter was published with a headline that did not reflect what was in the letter. This led to two letters that attacked the writer for ‘over-simplifying’. On Jan 13 another KBRM letter was published with a headline that charged Minto and his friends with anti-Semitism, a claim that wasn't in the letter. The next day The Press printed a letter that called the claim ‘ridiculous and predictable’.
It almost seemed that the two headlines were meant to invite attacks. The writers submitted the following rebuttals:
____ accused me of being simplistic and overlooking facts in regard to ‘the need for Palestinians to just accept Israel.’ The trouble is, I didn't say that — that was the headline inserted over my letter. What I said was, ‘If Gaza wants to end the Israeli 'oppression', all it has to do is accept the existence of Israel’. This is a true statement. If Gaza gave up its attacks and its aim of destroying Israel, there would be no need for Israel's partial blockade (the only act of supposed ‘oppression’).
As for overlooking facts, Mr _____'s statement that the Palestinians, ‘even Hamas’, have accepted the existence of Israel is not a fact, as the residents of Sderot can well testify. Besides these continuing attacks, there is the Hamas charter and recent statements by Hamas officials reaffirming their goal of destroying Israel.
Nor is it true that common Palestinian folk are imprisoned in their homes. The check points and security barriers in the West Bank are there to stop suicide bombers and other attacks.
They cause inconvenience to travellers, but they do not imprison anyone in their home.
_____ besides making the same accusation based on the false headline, belittled KBRM as a ‘small group that styles itself as Kiwis for Balanced Reporting on the Middle East’. Actually, we're pretty big, and our name was carefully chosen by vote.
His implication that we're part of an Israeli lobby is also untrue. We have no connection with Israel or any other group. Nor does our funding come, even in part, from anywhere other than our own pockets, plus contributions from other Kiwis who want to see the truth in their newspapers.
KBRM does not believe ‘Israel, right or wrong’; we believe that Israel has the right to have the truth told about it.
The fact is, neither writer found errors in our advertisement. It is unfortunate that some people choose to see truths favourable to Israel as ‘Zionist propaganda.’
I challenge your headline ‘Protest Against Israeli Player Anti-Semitic’ over my letter.
How could anyone infer that from what I wrote? I did not claim that Mr Minto or his protest was anti-Semitic. I have never met him or any of his mates.
What I did say was that ‘Minto and his friends prefer to go after Israel because they believe all the distortions, libels and lies that are being spread by PA propaganda’. This was my inference based on Minto's beliefs summarised in his 12 January ‘What-do-we-want’ blog.
After clarifying my thoughts I realise that it is not unreasonable to suspect that The Press Letters Column has an anti-Israel bias..
The initials PA (Palestinian Authority) were deleted from my letter.
The thrust of my letter was to shine a little more light behind the headlines and give Kiwis a glimpse of what the Middle East is really all about.
My last two paragraphs were intended as an ‘epilogue’ to widen the focus to include the secular West and to point out to your readers that it is not Jewish suicide bombers that threaten them. These paragraphs were deleted.
I leave your readers to make their own inferences.